The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and GrowthBury, J. B. (John Bagnell)
Philosophy
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth
Bury, J. B. (John Bagnell)
History -- Philosophy; Progress
What measure of liberty Bacon would have granted to the people of his
perfect state we cannot say; his work breaks off before he comes
to describe their condition. But we receive the impression that the
government he conceived was strictly paternal, though perhaps less
rigorous than the theocratic despotism which Campanella, under Plato's
influence, set up in the City of the Sun. But even Campanella has this
in common with More--and we may be sure that Bacon's conception would
have agreed here--that there are no hard-and-fast lines between the
classes, and the welfare and happiness of all the inhabitants is
impartially considered, in contrast with Plato's scheme in the Laws,
where the artisans and manual labourers were an inferior caste existing
less for their own sake than for the sake of the community as a whole.
[Footnote: This however does not apply to the Republic, as is so
commonly asserted. See the just criticisms of A. A. Trever, A History of
Greek Economic Thought (Chicago, 1916), 49 sqq.]
It may finally be pointed out that these three imaginary commonwealths
stand together as a group, marked by a humaner temper than the ancient,
and also by another common characteristic which distinguishes them, on
one hand, from the ideal states of Plato and, on the other, from modern
sketches of desirable societies. Plato and Aristotle conceived their
constructions within the geographical limits of Hellas, either in the
past or in the present. More, Bacon, and Campanella placed theirs in
distant seas, and this remoteness in space helped to create a certain
illusion, of reality. [Footnote: Civitas Solis, p. 461 (ed. 1620).
Expectancy of end of world: Ib. p. 455.] The modern plan is to project
the perfect society into a period of future time. The device of More
and his successors was suggested by the maritime explorations of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the later method was a result of the
rise of the idea of Progress. [Footnote: Similarly the ideal communistic
states imagined by Euemerus and Iambulus in the southern seas owed
their geographical positions to the popular interest in seafaring in the
Indian Ocean in the age after Alexander. One wonders whether Campanella
knew the account of the fictitious journey of Iambulus to the Islands of
the Sun, in Diodorus Siculus, ii. 55-60.]
6.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account